San Francisco, CA: The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes the critically-acclaimed comic book writer and author Steve Englehart for a discussion of his writing career and a booksigning on Wednesday, April 14 2010, from 7pm to 9pm. Englehart and artists Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin collaborated on the DC Comics title Detective Comics in the 1970s, producing a series of fondly remembered and highly influential Batman stories.

Englehart served as DC’s lead writer and oversaw all of their major characters, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and The Flash), and his Marvel Comics credits include many of their most popular characters, such as The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, Silver Surfer and many others. He has written for a number of animated television programs as well, including Street Fighter, G.I. Joe, and Captain America.

In 1980, Englehart wrote his first novel, The Point Man, about a disc jockey working on Sutter Street who stumbled into a war between psychic Russian espionage agents and a medieval wizard who managed a rock star—which turned out the be the tip of a very large iceberg. This year sees the release of his follow up novel, The Long Man, published by Tor Books.

The suggested donation for this event is $5. Doors will open at 6:45pm.

The Long Man

Max August, a point man for his platoon in Vietnam, discovered a different kind of war in 1980, a hidden war between the forces of freedom and bondage. Under the tutelage of legendary alchemist Cornelius Agrippa, he began to learn the use of real-world magick in the service of humanity, against those who would control us.

In 1985, Max stopped aging. He became “timeless,” the Long Man, and began to live forever in the prime of his life. In the years since, he’s worked on perfecting his skills so he can stay alive to fight a war that never ends, because like any warrior, he can be killed. Others have been killed-Agrippa, for one, and Max’s wife for another. So he’s learned magick, honed his combat skills, and worked every other discipline he could. He calls himself an alchemist with a gun, and he’s not wrong.

This past Hallowe’en, Max was summoned to protect Dr. Pamela Blackwell, a beautiful, savvy scientist at the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Blackwell’s research into neurotoxins could save millions of lives, but it has put her in the crosshairs of the FRC, a cabal determined to rule the world through any means possible: military action, economic manipulation, political chicanery . . . and magick. They are utterly ruthless, and they have a deadly reason for keeping Pam’s discovery from being made public.

Max and Pam together must travel to Barbados and beyond to destroy Pam’s assailants before they destroy her. And when they do, they uncover the reason she was targeted-a monstrous plot by men and women who will literally stop at nothing. Max will have to be more than just timeless to survive everything he’ll face as he races to stop a genocide of untold proportions. And Pam must master his real-world ways of magick if she’s to have any chance of survival at all.